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Breaking Interchange NewsAt the Federal Reserve meeting today the final debit card rules where announced and the debit Interchange cap has been raised to 21 cents plus 5 basis points per transaction (not to exceed a sum of these two components). The initial proposal in December called for capping debit Interchange fees to 12 cents per transaction. After taking eleven thousand public comments, the Fed has adjusted this cap to include a “fraud prevention adjustment” in order to compensate for the costs that banks and financial institutions incur to maintain security against fraud.

The rule was slated to take effect on July 21, yet with less than one month to put in place all the mandated provisions, more time is required to implement these changes. For example, it will take … more

Today businesses are finding that accepting card payments is a growing necessity and often a preferred method for collecting accounts receivables. So when Bill.com, who helps small and mid-sized businesses efficiently manage their day-to-day bill payment and invoicing processes, looked to integrate credit and debit card acceptance they conducted extensive research.

"What we found was that in addition to popular consumer oriented products like debit cards and rewards cards, today’s buyers are using several types of commercial card products including business, corporate, fleet, purchasing and GSA purchasing cards”, says Henrique Ceribelli, product manager at Bill.com. "We built our integrated merchant services solution so our clients could accept both consumer and commercial … more

Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) offered an amendment to the Economic Development Reauthorization bill to delay by 15 months the implementation of the Federal Reserve’s rule regulating debit interchange fees and the vote this afternoon was a close one. They needed 60 votes to avoid a Senate filibuster but only garnered 54 votes.

In a mega lobbying effort pitting mega retailers against mega banks, the mega retailers won the day and the amendment was defeated. The amendment had called for a six-month study by regulators to consider the fixed and incremental costs to the financial institutions of the new rules, whether the rules will adversely affect consumers, and whether the small issuer exemption is feasible.

At Vantage we market the VeriFone PAYware Mobile iPhone reader for mobile merchants who have the sales volume to support having their own direct merchant account. (How is that for a disclaimer?) However, as a merchant advocate, I'm always trying to recommend the best, lowest cost solution for my clients, and when their situation and environment dictates, I have recommended Square’s mobile payment solution. Of course along with this I've also followed up to get a first hand account of what real merchants thought of the Square experience.

Some cool features of Square:

It's simple to get started.

After entering a dollar amount for the transaction, you can add a picture from your phone or take a picture of the product you are selling.